Winsted selectmen adjourn town manager review after request it be public

A group of citizens gathered out front of town hall Tuesday awaiting the meeting and showing support for Town Manager Dale Martin.
Ryan Flynn — The Register Citizen

WINSTED >> His fate as the highest ranked official in Winchester hanging in the balance, Town Manager Dale Martin entered the packed LeeAnn LeClair room at Winchester Town Hall to raucous applause Tuesday.

He took a seat beside Mayor Marsha Sterling and immediately requested that his performance review be held before the public, rather than in executive session. Without hesitation, Mayor Marsha Sterling immediately moved that the meeting be adjourned.

The special meeting, requested Monday by Sterling, was by all accounts an opportunity for the Republicans on the board to cast a vote of no confidence and begin the process to remove Martin from his post.

The meeting was posted as an executive session, but according to the state Freedom of Information law, Martin had the right to bring the meeting into open session.

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“Discussion concerning the appointment, employment, performance, evaluation, health or dismissal of a public officer or employee, provided that such individual may require that discussion be held at an open meeting,” the law states in Section 1-200-6a in regards to executive sessions.

Following the adjournment, the four Republicans in attendance—Sterling, Candace Bouchard, Glenn Albanesius and Daniel Langer—immediately filed out of the room, followed shortly by Martin. Selectman Jorge Pimentel, a Republican, was absent from the meeting.

“For a party that was elected under [the platform] of transparency they certainly have taken so much of this behind closed doors,” Second Selectman Candy Perez, a Democrat, said after the meeting. “They didn’t want to put anything out in public tonight as you can see by them adjourning the meeting, which they called. It’s unfair on their part to do this so that the mayor can have her own way on the things that she wants while trying to skirt the protocols that are in place for public government.”

Selectman George Closson, the other Democrat on the board, mentioned Martin’s previous reviews under former First Selectman Maryanne Welcome. Martin’s performance, he said, was weighed against what he had or hadn’t accomplished on his list of goals.

“It was all straightforward. It was a legitimate personnel review,” Closson said.

Closson mentioned that he and Perez have not been kept in the loop at all. He said that Sterling had the option of adjourning to a larger room more fit for the audience, which was at or over the 40 person capacity of the LeeAnn LeClair room, but elected not to.

“[Sterling] wanted it in executive session,” Closson said. “She wanted to do it behind closed doors. She wasn’t going to have anything in the public session.”

Closson called hiring a good town manager and setting policy for that person and evaluating that person’s performance “the most important” charge of the Board of Selectmen.

Prior to the meeting, citizens gathered outside town hall, many showing their support for Martin. Several Democrats were among the group, including special election candidates for the board Steve Sedlack and Virginia Charette. Perez, the Democratic Town Committee co-chair, said that this was not a DTC rally.

Martin has come under fire because of the town’s recent dealings with David Viens, who served as the middleman in the bid to sell blighted Lambert Kay property to high-end gaming chair company XS4D Entertainment LLC, based in Arizona.

It was revealed in July that Viens is a convicted scam artist who served two years in federal prison in the 1980s for conspiracy to commit wire fraud. In 2011, Viens was ordered to pay back more than $2 million to investors for defrauding them in deals involving nursing home developments in Arizona. According to Sterling, Martin acknowledged that he knew Viens’ questionable background but proceeded with negotiations anyway. Neither she nor Town Attorney Kevin Nelligan were aware of Viens’s past, she said.

Martin left for a two-week vacation in July and left no interim in charge. With Martin gone, Sterling took up negotiations with Viens, who refused to give Sterling his last name and instead went by “David.” Viens and Sterling discussed the project over email and by phone. The deal subsequently was pulled by Viens. He called it “dead” and said that the company has already moved on to a property outside Winsted.

Why the deal was squashed is up for debate. Sterling spoke at a special meeting and gave a full run-down of the events from her perspective, which included that Viens had demanded a guarantee of the deal’s approval and that $500,000 in STEAP grant funding be awarded to the company. A few days later, an email account registered to Yvonne Wyman, the co-founder of XS4D sent a letter to the Register Citizen arguing several facts in Sterling’s memo, claiming that Sterling had tried to negotiate a higher price for the property’s sale following the STEAP grant being awarded to the town. XS4D also threatened that a lawsuit against Sterling could be pending. This memo came from an email address that Viens had previously provided to the Register Citizen as a way to contact Wyman.

Via the town charter, if the Board of Selectmen were to remove Martin from his post, it would require five of the seven selectmen voting “yes” to do so. The board would have to adopt a resolution to be served to the town manager and informing him of the pending removal. The town manager would then be suspended for 30 days and subsequently fired.

However, within 10 days of receiving this letter, the town manager could request a public hearing. He or she would not be able to be removed from office prior to this hearing. If Martin was to be fired, he would receive one month’s salary, according to the charter.

Five selectmen must agree to remove Martin, which is a key number. There are currently five Republican selectmen and two Democrats. The special election, scheduled for Sept. 13 hovers over any major town decision, since the Republicans could lose up to two seats on the board. If one or both of the Republicans were to lose his or her seat, it would take a bipartisan decision to remove Martin.

Members of both parties and Martin himself said previous town manager turnover may have contributed to the lack of oversight that allowed Centrella to take money without being detected. Winsted went through several managers before hiring Martin.

Martin was hired as town manager in March 2011 after being fired from his position of town manager in Davison City, Michigan in 2010.

Throughout this process, Sterling and Wyman have not returned multiple calls requesting comment. Martin could not be reached for comment after Tuesday’s meeting.